Healthcare Activists Call On Congress To Fund War On AIDS

Main Category: HIV / AIDS
Article Date: 13 Mar 2007 - 0:00 PDT

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Internationally-renowned physician and public health activist Dr. Paul Farmer of Partners In Health (PIH) will join more than 1500 medical students and doctors from the American Medical Student Association (AMSA) and the National Physicians Alliance (NPA) to press for Congressional funding to overcome the critical shortage of health workers in Africa and to combat the ever-growing public health crisis in a region devastated by AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria. AMSA, NPA and PIH are asking for a commitment of $8 billion over five years, based on World Health Organization (WHO) cost estimates for health worker training and retention programs.

"As healthcare workers and advocates, we cannot turn our backs on an entire continent," says AMSA President Jay Bhatt. "We call on Congress to keep the promises our country made to fight AIDS in Africa."

The groups are pushing for rapid passage of and increased funding for the African Health Capacity Investment Act. This bipartisan bill, sponsored by Senators Richard Durbin (D-Ill.), Norm Coleman (R-Minn.) and Russell Feingold (D-Wisc.), was introduced during the week of the AMSA rally at the Capitol on March 8th, 2007. The proposed legislation authorizes funding for sub-Saharan African countries to train and retain doctors, nurses, pharmacists and community health workers critical to lessening the burden of AIDS. "Investing in health workers brings us closer to realizing the full potential of the commitments the U.S. has made to fighting global AIDS, malaria and tuberculosis," said Bhatt.

The WHO estimates a dearth of 1 to 1.5 million health workers in sub- Saharan Africa; this shortage is the major bottleneck in the fight against the AIDS pandemic, hindering such worldwide efforts as the President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) and the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria.

"Study after study has shown that most health professionals want to stay in their country of origin, but find it impossible to do so because of low wages, inadequate resources and little opportunity for advancement." Says Lydia Vaias, NPA president. One sub-Saharan African nation, Ghana, has lost 69% of physicians, 25% of nurses and 42% of pharmacists which it graduated between 1993-2002. Vaias continues, "To change this deadly situation, we are bringing physicians out of the hospital and into the streets, straight to the capitol."

"Withholding care is not a matter of necessity; it's a choice," states Paul Farmer of PIH. "Programs like those that Partners In Health supports in Haiti, Rwanda and Lesotho have shown that effective health-worker training and health care delivery are possible even in the most resource-poor areas. Whether hundreds of millions of people will live or die is now a matter of political will."

Paul Farmer is the co-founder of Partners In Health, an organization whose goals are to bring the benefits of modern medical science to those most in need and to serve as an antidote to despair. http://www.pih.org.

The American Medical Student Association (AMSA), with over a half-century history of medical student activism, is the oldest and largest independent association of physicians-in-training in the United States. http://www.amsa.org

The National Physicians Alliance (NPA) was founded to restore physicians' primary emphasis on the core values of our profession: service, integrity, and advocacy. http://www.npalliance.org